for my lord's arrival, but have insisted on being his
taster, which the old lady was under too much subjection to him to dare
dispute with him; for every girl of the house fell to him in course,
and the old lady only now and then got her turn, in consideration of the
maintenance he had, and which he could scarce be accused of not earning
from her.

As soon as I heard them go down-stairs, I stole up softly to my own
room, out of which I had luckily not been missed; there I began to
breathe more free, and to give a loose to those warm emotions which the
sight of such an encounter had raised in me, I laid me down on the bed,
stretched myself out, joining and ardently wishing, and requiring any
means to divert or allay the rekindled rage and tumult of my desires,
which all pointed strongly to their pole: man. I felt about the bed as
if I sought for something that I grasped in my waking dream, and not
finding it, could have cried for vexation; every part of me plowing with
simulated fires. At length, I resorted to the only present remedy, that
of vain attempts at digitation, where the small-ness of the theatre did
not yet afford room enough for action, and where the pain my fingers
gave me, in striving for admission, though they procured me a slight
satisfaction for the present, started an apprehension which I could not
be easy till I had communicated to Phoebe and received her explanations
upon it.

The opportunity, however, did not offer till next morning, for Phoebe
did not come to bed till long after I was gone to sleep. As soon then as
we were both awake, it was but in course to bring our ly-a-bed chat to
hand, on the subject of my uneasiness: to which a recital of the love
scene I had thus, by chance, been spectatress of, served for a preface.

Phoebe could not hear it to the end without more than one interruption
by peals of laughter, and my ingenuous way of relating matters did not a
little heighten the joke to her.

But, on her sounding me how the sight had affected me, without mincing
or hiding the pleasurable emotions it had inspired me with, I told
her at the same time that one remark had perplexed me, and that very
considerably. "Aye!" says she, "what was that?" "Why," replied I,
"having very curiously and attentively compared the size of that
enormous machine, which did not appear, at least to my fearful
imagination, less than my wrist, and at least three of my hand-fuls
long, to that of the tender small pa